SharePoint 2013 - A Practical Tool For Information Management (Part 2)

Part  1

Metadata Navigation and Filtering

Metadata navigation and filtering can be enabled in lists and libraries. Using metadata navigation makes it easier for users to find content in large lists and libraries. Users can easily filter and find content by using a navigation tree. It is separate from the search functionality that is available in the list. When setting up metadata navigation, you can determine which columsn from the library appear in the tree, and you can also specify key filters.

1.  To enable metadata navigation, first you have to activate Metadata Navigation and Filtering feature in site features. Once you have activated this feature, you will see an additional setting in the list settings. Go to list settings, under General Settings, you will see Metadata navigation settings. Click this link.

           

Figure 15-17: Metadata Navigation Settings

Add ItemType, the new column you created, from Available Hierarchy Fields to Selected Hierarchy Fields. You can also add filter fields that you want to appear in the tree navigation.

2.  This is how navigation tree looks:

           

Figure 15-18: Metadata navigation and filtering

Click on any term in the tree to filter the results, you will only see items related to that term. The tree displays a hierarchy of managed terms. This lets users create dynamic displays of content. Users can refine this more by using the key filters. You may have noticed another option on the settings page that lets you create index. By default, SharePoint performs automatic index creation. Indexes are created automatically for the fields that you add to the navigation tree.  You can disable automatic indexing and configure the indexes manually. If a user loads a view that exceeds the threshold, then metadata navigation and filtering creates a modified version of the original user query called a fallback query. The fallback query runs against a portion of the list instead of the complete list. As a result, it displays a partial set of the items requested.

3.  In list settings, there is another option called Enterprise Metadata and Keywords Settings under Permissions and Management. If enabled, it lets users enter their own keywords. All keywords are stored in keywords set. Go to list settings, and click on this link. Check Add an Enterprise Keywords column to the list and enable keyword synchronization. Now go back to the list and add a new item. You will see two fields, one the custom metadata column and another for keywords. If term set is closed, users cannot add their own terms but they can still add keywords using the keywords field and it helps them collaborate and share information with each other because this information then appears in search results when someone performs a search using these keywords.

Metadata Management in SharePoint Online

1.  Now, you will enable metadata management in SharePoint Online. Log on to SharePoint Online. Go to Site collection features and activate feature SharePoint Server Standard Site Collection features.

           

Figure 15-19: SharePoint Server Standard Site Collection features

2.  Go to Manage site features and activate SharePoint Server Publishing feature.

           

Figure 15-20: SharePoint Server Publishing

3.  After activating the feature, you will see a link called Navigation in Site Settings.

Figure 15-21: Navigation

4.  Click this link to go to Navigation Settings. In Global Navigation, select Managed Navigation option.

Figure 15-22: Managed Navigation

5.  In Current Navigation, select Managed Navigation (the second option).

6.  In Managed Navigation: Term Set section, click Create Term Set button. This will add a new term set. You will see message “Successfully created term set ‘xyz’. If your site name is ABC Inc., the term set group will be called as ABC Inc. Team Site Navigation. You can create more term sets if you want by clicking the Create Term Set button. All term sets will appear under the same group.

7.   Under the Create Term Set button, there will be a link Term Store Managemen Tool. Click it to open the tool and add terms.

8.  Under Site Collection – Your site URL link, you will see your new term set. Open its menu and select Create Term. Enter term and hit Enter. Add as many terms as you like. Remember, you can group managers and contributors in the settings on the right side. You can also enter root URLs of site collections that will have read only access to the contents of term sets in this group in the Site Collection Access.

           

Figure 15-23: Add new terms

9.  After you have added term, click on the term. It will open term’s settings on the right side. You can change the default label of the term. You can also add other labels for the term. You can enable or disable tagging for this term by checking/unchecking Available for Tagging option.

10.  You can enter children terms as well. For example, select a term and then add terms under it. You can create a hierarchy of terms.

           

                       

Figure: 15-24: Terms hierarchy

11.  Click on the term set again. On the right side, you will see general properties of the term set. There are several other tabs that you can use to definre more properties for the term set. Select INTENDED USE tab. You can choose the option of showing or hiding this term set on this page. You can also choose if you want to use this term set for site navigation. You can define custom sort for your terms by going to CUSTOM SORT tab. Go to TERM-DRIVEN PAGES tab.

           

Figure 15-25: Term-drive pages

Target Page Settings allow you to change target page for terms in this term set. You can specify the page that loads when you navigate to the friendly URL for a term in this term set. Catalog Item Page settings allow you to define pages used to render catalog data. The terms in this term set can be used as catalog categories. You can specify the page that’s loaded when you navigate to a catalog item under a category in this term set. 

CUSTOM PROPERTIES tab lets you define custom properties to store additional data about a term set. If you select a term and then go to CUSTOM PROPERTIES tab, you will see Shared Properties and Local Properties. Shared Properties are available on all reused or pinned instances of this term anywhere in the term store. Local Properties are only available for this term in this term set.

12.  Go to main site and add a custom list or use an existing list to test metadata terms that you added in the term set. You can use default Documents library in the main site to test the metadata terms. Go to Documents library. Click LIBRARY tab. Click Create Column button in the ribbon. Enter My Terms in the Column name. Select Managed Metadata as the column type. In Term Set Settings, select the term set you created above. Click OK.

13.  Add a new document in the library. Go to document properties and select Edit Properties. On Edit Properties page, you will see metadata column My Terms. Start typing something in the field, you will see the terms related to the word being entered in the suggestions. Select terms and click Save.

           

Figure 15-26: Custom terms

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SharePoint 2013 - A Practical Tool For Information Management (Part 1)

Introduction

Information Management is a very hot topic and the reason is that is it not an easy job to manage information and that is one reason SharePoint is popular with the enterprises because they are the ones who needs these tools the most. Managing information is a headache for these organizations. Data lies in different silos and bringing all data in one place is difficult but important because it is the data that generates information. Managers then use this information to create “useful” information that helps the stake holders. If there is one tool that reduces the pain of these organizations, that is SharePoint. SharePoint is a perfect tool for managing data and information. One big problem that companies face is searching for and finding information. SharePoint is a perfect search tool that can search everything including network folders, external databases, websites and everything you can think of. In this book, I will explain some important features of SharePoint and also show how search can be used to maximize benefits of using SharePoint.

Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2013

Metadata has gained popularity over the last few years. It greatly enhances search functionality. Managed metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define and then use as attributes for items in SharePoint. Metadata is information about information. You can add extra tags to the information to identify it easily. It’s also called as labelling. You can label your documents or items and items can be searched by users using these labels or tags. These labels or tags are metadata. For example, if you have a contract document stored in SharePoint, you can label it using keywords like contract, case number, attorney name, law practice name, etc. Metadata is managed centrally. It’s organized in a way that makes sense in your business. It is important to understand some key terminology.

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is a formal classification system. Taxonomy groups the words, labels, and terms that describe something, and then arranges the groups into a hierarchy. Taxonomy plays an important part in the management of information. Each organization defines different taxonomies for their different systems or departments. Some organizations prefer a single taxonomy for their business operations.  For example, taxonomy for the HR department lists all terms related to HR operations. Taxonomy for finance department lists down all commonly used terms in finance.

Folksonomy

A folksonomy is an informal classification system. It evolves gradually as users collaborate on words used in a site. The concept is same as bookmarking. The tag clouds you see on blogs are an example of folksonomy.

Term Set

A term set is a group of related terms. Term sets can have different scope, depending on where you create the term set. Local term sets are created within the content of a site collection and are available only to the users of that site collection. Global term sets are available to all users across the SharePoint farm. Global term sets are available to sites that subscribe to managed metadata service.

Terms

A term is a specific word or keyword that you associate with an item. It is a single item in a term set. A term is unique because it has a unique ID and it can have many text labels. For example, in a multilingual site, the term can have different labels for different languages. Managed terms are pre-defined. Administrator defines these terms. Enterprise keywords are terms that site user adds to items. The collection of enterprise keywords is known as the keywords set.

Group

Group is a collection of term sets. Only users having contribute permissions can manage term sets within a group.

Term Store Management Tool

The term store management tool is the tool that is used to define term sets and terms. It is used by the administrators and is available in the central administration site under Search.

Managed Metadata column

This is special kind of column that you can add to lists. It is used to attach metadata to the items. This is an auto-populate column. As soon as user starts typing, SharePoint displays lists of terms available in the term set. User has to select a term set when adding this column to the list. User can then select the terms that are relevant to their item. This is also called as tagging.

Enterprise keywords column

This is a column that users can add to content types, lists, or libraries to enable users to tag items. It is a multi-value column. Users can add new terms in this column or select existing ones.

Social Tags

Social tags are tags that site users can apply to content to help them categorize information. Social tagging is useful because it helps site users to improve the discoverability of information on a site. Social tag consists of three parts: User identity, item URL, term. Term is stored in a term stored and is public information. User identity can be made private if user wants to stay anonymous. If user enters new keywords when tagging information, these keywords are stored in the keywords term set. Social tags support folksonomy-based tagging.

Metadata Advantage

The metadata allows users to tag items consistently. Centrally stored term stores are used by all users, therefore, users don’t have to enter their own version of keywords. Common keywords available in the term store make it easier for the users to tag items. Biggest advantage of metadata is information discoverability. It is easier to find information. Information management has always been a problem especially in big companies and organizations where the volume of data is huge. It is important to convert data into information because information provides value. Discoverability is the first step towards achieving that goal. If information is stored somewhere and is not easily discoverable, that information is useless because it is not being used. Metadata is especially useful in the business environments where information is stored in different formats and across different sites. Using metadata, searching this scattered information become easy.

Metadata navigation

Metadata navigation enables users to create view dynamically, based on specific metadata fields.

Planning Metadata

Careful planning is very important before managed metadata service can be used. This is part of governance and is considered best practice. Each organization should have a taxonomy and based on taxonomy administrators can define global term sets. Planning metadata in advance helps administrators run operations smoothly. Problems start to appear when the size of data starts growing with the passage of time. As the number of users grows, and their usage of sites grows, data also grows quickly. With more documents stored in sites, and if users have adopted metadata, the size of metadata database also grows quickly. It is important to plan out things in advance otherwise managing and rectifying things at a later stage becomes problematic and time consuming.

Metadata Management

In this section, you will learn how to manage metadata and see a few practical examples.

1.  Go to Central Administration site. Go to General Application Settings.

2.  Click Farm Search Administration under Search.

3.  Click Search Service Application link.

4.  Under Queries and Results, click Search Dictionaries. Term Store Management Tool will open. Here you can define new groups, term sets and terms.

5.  Expand Managed Metadata Service and select New Group. Enter Custom as the group name and hit Enter. Enter description, add group managers and contributors and click Save. 

Figure 15-14: Managed Metadata Service

6.      Click the new group and open drop down and select New Term Set. Enter CustomTags as the name of the term set and hit Enter. Add description, owner, contact, stakeholders and click Save. In the Submission Policy, you can choose to keep term set open or closed. When a term set is closed, only metadata managers can add terms to this term set. When it is open, users can add terms from a tagging application. 

7.      Click on the term store and select Create Term. Enter a term and hit Enter. Add as many terms you like.

Figure 15-15: Create Term

You can see the other available options in the figure above. You can copy an existing term ste, you can reuse terms, you can pin term with children and you can move term set. Pin Term With Children means that you can pin this term with another term store.

       8.      You have now defined a term set. Let’s use it in a list. Go to your SharePoint site and create a custom list. Call it Metadata. Add a column called ItemType. To create column, select LIST tab and click Create Column button. Enter Metadata in the column name and select Managed Metadata as the type. Check Allow multipe values. In Term Set Settings, select the newly created term set. In Allow Fill-in, choose Yes. Click OK. 

9.      Enter a new item in the list. Enter something in Title. Click in ItemType field and start typing. SharePoint will show you suggestions from the term set. Once you have attached metadata to the item you can search for the item using metadata terms in search. 

Figure 15-16: Metadata in action

Part 2

SharePoint and Yammer: Unanswered Questions

At last week's Convergence event in New Orleans, Microsoft announced what it calls its updated roadmap for Yammer integration with Office 365.  Concurrently, Jared Spataro, Senior Director of the Microsoft Office Division, posted the details on the SharePoint Blog.

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SharePoint New and Improved Products

SharePoint's ecosystem continues to provide creative solutions for SharePoint users. Here's just a small sampling of the action going on in the SharePoint space.

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SharePoint 2013: Click in web part refreshes the whole page (web part page post back problem)

This occurs in content editor and script editor web parts in SharePoint 2013 if you have javascript code in the editor web part, the whole page refreshes when you call a javascript function which interferes with the functionality you have implemented. Every time you click a javascript button, the page posts back and thus your code never runs. Do you want to resolve this issue? Learn how in the book A Practical Guide To SharePoint 2013. Book coming soon! Here is the book's website:

http://practicalguidetosharepoint.com

SharePoint 2013 - Web Part Properties are disabled

Are you wondering where web part properties have gone in SharePoint 2013? Have you given up after searching for clues in Google? You add a web part to the page but you are unable to edit it because properties are nowhere to be seen. All you see is an arrow that shows/hides the web part. You are unable to select the web part on the page! Ok, the reason for all these symptons is the browser. I started facing this problem all of a sudden. The only thing I remember I did before this problem started was installing a cummulative update for SharePoint. I thought the update has messed permissions somehow so I tried to fix those as well but all in vain. Finally, I opened SharePoint 2013 site in Chrome and it was working fine, I could see the web part properties. That made me think about the IE and I checked the version, it was 11. Upon checking updates in the Control Panel, I found out that a recent update had installed IE11 on the machine. Automatic updates are enabled on my server and I was using this server after a long time. The previous version installed was IE9. I uninstalled the update that installed IE11, restarted the server and web part properties are back. I am sharing this because I couldn't find a clue on the search engines. So, if you are in the same situation, check your browser version and revert back to the version that was working.

Free SharePoint Tool Analyzes BLOBs

We have yet to see a free tool that didn't intrigue us at SharePoint Pro. And Metalogix continues that trend with its free tool, BLOBulator, which helps organizations estimate the size of their Microsoft SharePoint content databases.

BLOBulator analyzes the amount of Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) occupying vital storage space in the SQL Server database for SharePoint. The aptly named BLOBs are content files such as Microsoft Office documents, PDF files, audio and video files that can slow down SharePoint performance and cause users to experience slow upload or download times.

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